The personal blog of Reyn Bowman, a Durham NC resident, 40-year veteran of community-destination marketing and still an explorer in community sense-of-place. Opinions expressed here are those of the author.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Durham Is Loyal to Duke

Funny how people get an impression Durham isn’t loyal to itself and its assets. Some of it is that half the people working in Durham commute here, and we can’t hear ourselves think sometimes. Some of it is because Durham is activist by nature and not only encourages a wide range of opinions but also debates both sides of various arguments.

But I’ve never been in a community more loyal, and that includes Duke. Sometimes the students there, especially writing for The Chronicle seem to get “fortress-it is” and bemoan that Durham doesn’t like them.

That notion has been here as long as Duke, but it isn’t true, not even when it comes to basketball. Some people assume, because the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is in the next city over and has a student body more than double that of Duke, that most of Durham would be Tar Heel fans.

Not so. Scientific polling has demonstrated over and over that the majority of Durham residents are Duke fans. Makes sense. Duke is well-known worldwide, and people come to live in Durham from all over the world. And, those from here or elsewhere in the State do not make up the majority of residents nor the majority of college graduates.

So, what do the surveys show? Of the ACC teams, Durham fans break down as 56% Duke, 20% UNC (in Chapel Hill), 7% NC State (in Raleigh). And the real shocker: 48% of the fans in Orange County, where Chapel Hill is located, cheer for Duke, and 45% of the fans in Raleigh cheer for Duke.

So Dukies and Crazies… feel the love.

P.S. And before I get calls that this just can’t be, regardless of how scientific the polling is--based on UNC input, UNC grads equal 4% of Durham’s population or 5.4% of its adult population.